Kirsty Logan

Biography

Kirsty Logan won her first literary contest at the age of 8, and has been going mostly downhill ever since. She is currently a writer (kirstylogan.com), editor (fracturedwest.com), waitress, and general layabout.

She holds an MLitt (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Glasgow University and won the 2009 Gillian Purvis Award for New Writing. She mostly writes urban fantasy, retold fairytales, sci-fi erotica, and mythical poetry. Her writing appears in Polluto, Pank, Popshot, and some other places that don't begin with P. She has written three novels, all of which will stay unpublished as they should not be inflicted on strangers.

Kirsty likes bad horror films, coffee cupcakes, and sticking pins in maps. She lives in Glasgow with her girlfriend.

Writing sample

The day after I met Grace - her pierced little mouth, her shitkicker boots, her hands as small as goosebumps writing numbers on my palm. The day after I met her, I went to the heart rental place. 

I hadn't rented in years, and doubted they would have my preferred model. The window display was different, the hearts sleeker and shinier than I remembered. Some of them had extras I'd never seen, like timers and standby buttons and customised beating patterns.

That made me think about Grace, her ear pressed to my sternum, listening to the morse code of her name, and my own heart started to creep up my throat so I swallowed it down and went into the shop.

An hour later I was swallowing lunch and trying to read the instruction leaflet. They made it seem so complicated but it wasn't really. I remembered how to fit it, I was just reading the leaflet as a distraction. A way to not think about how Grace looked when she bit her lip, when she wrote the curls of her number. How she would look later tonight, when she. When we.

Comment

"I'm thrilled to receive this award - I can't wait to spend less time making cappuccinos and more time writing stories. Kirsty intends to spend the next year working on 'Slacker Love Songs', a collection of short fiction using mythical and fairytale tropes to tell stories of young people in modern Scotland."